American Reacts How Did Each German State Get Its Name?
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- Опубліковано 27 тра 2024
- 👉Original Video: • How Did Each German St...
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Love your videos! Thanks General Knowledge
"The dots about the A" show you that it is not an A. ;) The German alphabet has 4 more letters than the English alphabet: Ä, Ö, Ü and ß.
Munich is how English speaker call München, not all non-Germans. In Portuguese it is called Monique for example, in Italian Monaco (di Baviera). In contrast to American cities, European cities usually have different names in different languages.
For the simple naming of things in local languanges, keep in mind that people traveled less, and usually knew only the stuff around 100 miles around them.
So "big castle" often was enough of a name when in the whole region there were but three castles in total.
the "big one",
the "small one",
the "red one", because it was maye from red sandstone.
the "new one", f. ex. Newcastle.
or the "old one", f. ex. Oldenburg.
etc.
Since a castle usually kept the region safe, the whole region was called by thw castle.
"Lower and Upper" usually does not refer to the compass direction (i.e. "upper" being the northernmost) - but usually by elevation.
Lower = low lands
Upper = high lands/mountains
ir originates from long before any compass or even realistic world idea. Ancient Egypt had upper Egypt and lower Egypt, lower Egypt being in the north, around the low Nile delta, upper in the south being higher up.
And it doesn't get more OG than that, them being named (and united) over 5000 years ago. .
Also along rivers. Lower is the delta and upper is closer to the source. Like in egypt for example.
Munich , is what English speaking countries call München.
Many places (cities, areas, countries) have their own name for a specific country.
These can be completely different from country to country.
E.g.
Deutschland (ger)
Germany (eng)
Tyskland (nor)
Allemagne (fra)
etc.
And no - it is not something we "only use once in a while - and we all really just call it Germany in daily speech" - this ARE the names used.
fun fact in saxony living no saxons, the real saxon tribes living in lower saxony, Hamburg, Bremen and the south of schleswig holstein
Correct, but you forgot Westphalia.
Hey ^^ the Umlaut is actually easy (please note that Americans usually think that it makes no difference if a vowel has dots on top or not but that's completely wrong - it makes a great deal of difference and that's why the narrator's pronunciation of the word Flächenländer for instance is unfortunately completely OFF 😅).
A makes an 'uuh' sound and Ä sounds like an AY (only shorter without the Y sound in the end)
The words "schwül" and "schwul" are complete different. The adjective "schwül" means "humid" and the adjective "schwul" means "gay".
The tow dots above a vowel in German is called the umlaut, it modifies how that sound is pronounced.
And the dot above our i or j, is called a tittle.
No, the dots are called trema. The presence of a trema over a vowel in German and some other languages marks the vowel as being umlauted or „sound changed“.
@@NuEM78 It IS an umlaut.
@@NuEM78 In other languages like Turkish, Hungarian and the Scandinavian languages, the two dots do NOT indicate sound changes but are used to represent existing vowel sounds in those languages.
In German, the Umlaut only affects the fat or broad vowels (a, o, u). It does not affect slim or slender vowels (e, i). The sound change is rooted in German grammar as these changes occur in noun plurals or diminutives, comparative and superlative forms of adjectives, certain verb tenses, etc.
The term trema is not generally used in German by Germans, though, because of the historical evolution of the two dots. The term Umlaut is a German word coined by Jacob Grimm. And the sign for the Umlaut in German has its own story. The vowel sound change was originally written by adding an e after the vowel. This turned a -> ae, o -> oe, u -> ue. Some names in German are still written that way (e.g. Goethe). Scribes used to save space when writing on expensive parchment or paper by putting a tiny e on its back above the umlauted vowel. This e gradually got reduced to two oblique strokes above the letter and later still was reduced to two dots.
@@alicemilne1444 Which is another great reason why they shouldn‘t be called umlaut.
English doesn't have a lot of accents because it just lets the same letter make multiple different sounds without showing you which one it is supposed to be.
I don't think there are ANY accent marks at all in English. It's just ASCII. The dots over i and j have no expressive functionality. The "heavy metal umlauts" (Motörhead, Mötley Crew etc) are design only.
Any accents used come from the languages these words originate from (née, voilà ...) and are eventually dismissed anyway in colloquial writing.
yes sometimes places are called after simple things like rivers, castles or other landmarks. like the US State Montana - spanish for mountain.
Or native tribes such as Minnesota or Massachusetts, or people (Pennsylvania = William Penn + Sylvania i.e. forested area), Georgia etc.
All this Saxony stuff is probably pretty confusing for you. Take comfort, most Germans don't get it either. The original Saxony, which Charlemagne conquered between 770 and 800, is what is now Lower Saxony (excluding Friesland), Westphalia, Holstein and the western part of what is now Saxony-Anhalt up to the rivers Elbe and Saale. This area was an important duchy in the old German kingdom and Holy Roman Empire. This duchy was broken up in 1180 and only the name migrated up the Elbe, first to the area around Wittenberg and later, in 1423, to what is now Saxony. The people did not migrate with the name. The original Saxons are Low German, the Saxons of today are Central German. Their dialects are completely different.
You got a lot of historical facts right.
👍🙂
Herman is the German name for Arminius. Arminius was a prince of the Cherusci who inflicted one of the most devastating defeats on the Romans in the year 9 AD at the Varus Battle with the destruction of three legions. The Kalkriese discovery region is an area that is considered a possible site of the Varus Battle of 9 AD due to a large number of Roman finds. Colloquially, it is usually referred to as the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest or the Varus Battle.
This major defeat most probably prevented the Romans from subjugating larger areas in northern Germany.
The fact that they tried several times is shown by the finds discovered a few years ago of several battles at the Harzhorn, which took place later than the Varus Battle.
The term Harzhorn event refers to several related battles that took place between several thousand Roman legionaries and their auxiliary troops as well as an unknown number of Germanic tribes around the year 235/236 AD on the western edge of the Harz Mountains on the Harzhorn hill and represent a comparatively late example of the military presence of the Romans in Germania.
This find is also significant because of its place in the historical events at the beginning of the so-called imperial crisis of the 3rd century. Previously, historical research had not considered such extensive Roman military operations possible for this period and in this region. According to current knowledge, it is virtually certain that the battle belongs to the context of the Germanic wars of Emperor Maximinus Thrax in 235 and 236 AD.
What do you think Pennsylvania, Nevada or Virginia mean? Those are also quite basic terms.
"Mikil" is the Germanic cognate of an Indoeuropean word for "big". The commonly seen cognate is Greek "megalos"
München is the German name of this city.
In other languages they have different names for this city. So it‘s not how we call it vs. how „the rest of the world“ calls it. I think Americans are the only ones who think that the English names for foreign places must be the names the whole world uses. Why on earth would that be the case?!? You call it Munich in Englisch because it‘s hard for you to pronounce München. But that does not mean the rest of the world calls it Munich too. Why would someone in France or Finland or Russia use the English name for a German city?!
It’s München in German, Munich in English, Munique in French, Monaco in Italian, Mnichow in Czech, Münih in Turkish…
Different languages, different vocabulary. Sometimes a language has its own terms for a city, a state or a country, sometimes it hasn‘t and the original name is used.
California, to give you an other example, is called Kalifornien in German.
Edit: Just looked the French name for Munich up because I wasn’t sure anymore. The French spelling is Munich, but the pronounciation is very different from English. I thought I had learned in my French classes in school to spell it Munique, but maybe I remember that incorrectly. The pronounciation, however, is French and not English.
In Greek it's Μόναχο (Monaho)
Lower isn't always a question of elevation, it can mean lower down the river and upper higher up the river, nearer the source. Of the two French departmentsin Alsace, Upper Rhine is to the south, and Lower Rhine, nearer the sea, is to the north.
I am afraid I need to point out that water flows downhill.
"There are towns in germany?
There are streets in germany?
There are houses in germany?
Next you tell me, there are people living in germany.....?
Gotcha! You try to fool me, but i'm too "intailigent"......"
Right!😉
Not only in the two world wars, Saarland was always a hotly contested area. Within the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nations, several princes fought over it, which is why the region always belonged to a different principality. Then during the time of Napoleon it constantly switched back and forth between Bavaria, Prussia and France. After the First World War it was subject to the League of Nations (something like the forerunner of the UN), then in 1933 it was annexed to the Third Reich. After the Second World War, in 1947 the state of Saarland was founded as an independent state with France as protector. From then on it was called Saarland, as it had always been called something else (Saargebiet, Saarbrücken-Nassau, etc., etc.). And in 1955 there was another vote, with the Saarland rejoining West Germany.
East Germany was Sachsen-Anhalt, Sachsen, Thüringen, Brandenburg, Berlin (1/4 of, the Soviet sector, obviously not West Berlin, which was made of the British, French and American sectors) and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, these days sometimes known as the "neuen Bundesländer" (new federal lands).
In europe, most languages are spelt phonetically, or at least close to that. That means each letter has one specific sound, and its ALWAYS this sound in every word. Now the latin alphabet does not have enough letters to represent all sounds. Therefore, there exists ä, ö, ü, as well as the letter combinations ch and sch. These represent additional sounds.
You must mean the modern English alpabet doesn't have enough letters to represent all sounds?
Even the old English alpabet had the letter æ to separate ä-sound from a-sound.
@@virtueofhate1778 theoretically yes, but it doesnt even try to be phonetical so it doesnt matter.
@@ldubt4494 Everything you said is simply wrong.
@@virtueofhate1778 ? I speak german, duh.
@@ldubt4494 Good for you, but what that's got to do with old English alphapets?
Yes, names are that simple. Like rivers being "streaming water". The waterway behind Central Station in Amsterdam, " 't IJ", has just that same meaning as well.
German has the letters: a-z, A-Z, Ää, Öö, Üü and ß
Ää, Öö, Üü are umlauts. So Ä makes a different sound than A .
ß is basically an ss. This letter does not exist at the beginning of a word so it is only available in lower case.
- In French there is Ë, ë. This means that the E has to be spoken individually but the sound does not change.
The dots over the vowels a e o u are "diacrytic marks" and change the sound of that vowel. These in particular are called "umlaut" limited to these four vowels, i.e. there's no ï in the German alphabet. French does have an ï but then none of the umlauts for the others vowels, however there are many variations with "accent" markers like à ā â.
French, Czech, Swedish and other scripts feature many such marks, hooks and squiggly lines for all possible characters abive and below like c ç ć č ő õ ø å ē ...
The pronunciation (or lack thereof) of these "modified" characters and their potential role in grammar depends on the language. French "ca" sounds like "ka", "ça" like "sa" etc.
The dots over i and j in the standard Latin alphabet (incl English 😉) are their base form and their presence might vary on the font face used for styling only. Historically they also emerged from other letter forms and combinations of strokes into the characters we have now -- the j is basically an i with a hook attached.
I find it very confusing that the people in Norway and Denmark score through the ”o” but still pronounce it.
German does not have the "ë" (only "ä", "ö", "ü") but French does. However, "ë" serves a different function there, namely to indicate that the vowel letter ("e") does not form a digraph (i.e. a combination of two letters representing one sound) with the preceding vowel letter but is pronounced separately. Examples are "Noël" (xmas, NO-EL) or "Citroën" (French car brand, CI-TRO-EN).
@@berlindude75 oops, the "e" must have been slipped through by muscle memory... thanks for pointing it out 👍🏻
We used to have a Citroën so it probably stuck in my mind and didn't seem "foreign", although we always made fun of it calling it Zitrön esp. since my aunt had a yellow 2CV.
@@CirTap Yeah, Germans usually double down on the "oë" (seeing the umlaut diacritics and having the alternative spelling "oe" for umlaut "ö" in mind) and it becomes "Citrön" (or "Zitrön") in common spoken German. 😄
The dots above the vowels A, O and U make the „Umlaute“ (changed sounds) Ä, Ö and Ü.
For the pronunciation:
Ä is pronounced like A is most commonly pronounced in English, for example the A in „land“ or „apple“.
Ö is pronounced like the O in „word“.
And the Ü sound doesn’t exist in English as far as I know, but it’s the same as the Y in German or Greek.
They can either stand on their own for words that always have a sound that’s not in the normal alphabet,
for example: „über“ (over/ super) is not pronounced the same as the English version of it: „uber“ (even though you could argue that in this case Ä is very similar to E, and Ü is exactly like Y, so they could be represented in those words by normal letters),
Or they are used to mark when a word changes in a different grammatical function,
for example: „ein Apfel“ (1 apple) becomes „zwei Äpfel“ (2 apples) as the plural is indicated by a different vowel instead of added syllable. Most English words get their plural by adding an -s, but this is like some like „mouse“ or „foot“ become „mice“ and „feet“.
This can happen with nouns or verbs and for many different grammatical functions.
Ä is more like the ea in bear
To add to other comments about how umlauts are pronounced, they can often indicate a plural noun in addition to changing vowel pronunciation. For example, "der Baum" means "tree," and "die Bäume" means "trees." Not the case for all umlauts, but common.
The "two dots" above Consonants are "Umlauts" - an Ä is an AE in Old English, which is a Germanic Language as well.
The war between Prussia and Austria went about Schlesien, which is a part of Poland since 1918. The fights about the old saxon area where fought between the franks and the saxons which where both germanic tribes. It happened around the 8th century.
The flags of Lower Saxony and Rheinland-Pfalz are based on the German flag (black-red-gold) because they were made up after WWII. Some states are basically old kingdoms, dukedoms etc with a long history, and their flags took the old colours of these principalities (Bavaria, Saxony, Baden-Württemberg, Schleswig Holstein, the city states, Hesse).
The majority of the German Bundesländer were only created in their current form after World War II, or for former East Germany even only after reunification. This happened partially by combining two separate pre-existing territories, which is why six of them are hyphenated.
The three city states have existed for longer, in case of Hamburg and Bremen much longer. Bavaria and Saxony have existed in close to their current borders for a long time as well. Hessen, Thuringia and the Saarland have existed for a while as well but with some significantly different borders over the years.
In Germany there are some unusual letters , there are Ää, Öö, Üü and ß.
The ß is NOT an B, it makes an long S sound.
The dots on the vowels indicate an added "e". ä, ö, ü are therefore sounds in between ae, oe, ue, Start at an a and shift towards an e, then you have the ä sound. Same with the others.
Since you liked the Flag of Bremen here a little side note/fun fact: People from Bremen call their flag themselves "Speckflagge" whicht means "bacon flag" which of course from the fact that the red/white stripes and squares in the background somehow remind on the texture of a bacon stripe
1:15 In English you have to learn which vocal letter makes which sound at which place in which word. In German they use umlauts and diphthongs to make it clear for every reader.
2:00 The original German kingdom consisted of the tribal duchies of Saxony, Francia, Swabia (originally the kingdom of the Alemanni, rechristened after the name of biggest tribe in this confederacy, the Suebi, who also founded a kingdom in Galicia and northern Portugal) and Bavaria, plus the duchies of Lower and Upper Lorraine, the Friesland, the Landgraviate of Thuringia, the duchy of Carinthia and the duchy of Bohemia (appointed to kingdom in 1158) as well as some marches or margraviates (border provinces, like Austria, Lausitz and Meißen). Those tribal duchies were split up after the dynasty of the Hohenstaufen (dukes of Swabia and emperors) went extinct after banning their related rivals, the Welfs (dukes of Bavaria and Saxony). Swabia was divided between different earldoms, imperial abbeys, imperial cities as well as imperial estates administrated by Habsburg: Francia was divided in Hesse (ruled first by Thuringia, then becoming its own Landgraviate), Franconia and the Palatinate of the Rhine (plus some Prince-Bishoprics), Bavaria became the duchies of Upper and Lower Bavaria, and Saxony became a bunch of smaller duchies ruled by different heirs of the former duchy of Saxonia as well as some big Prince-Bishoprics. One of the Saxonian duchies was the duchy of Anhalt, ruled by branch of House Ascania. The originally Thuringian march of Meißen was ruled since 1089 by House Wettin, which won the office of Elector of Saxony in 1423 and called itself since then Electorate and Duchy of Saxony, but had actually never been part of the original Saxony, which is nowadays known as the states of Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt.
5:02 München or Munich got its name from "bei den Mönchen" - at the monks. In 1158 Duke Henri the Lion of House Welf had a bridge constructed there for the salt road and his cousin Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa of House Hohenstaufen granted the settlement the license to hold markets, collect tolls and to mint. In 1180 however Henri was banned and the duchy was given to House Wittelsbach, who made it the residency of Upper Bavaria in 1255 after the first divide (one heir got the duchy of Lower Bavaria and the other the duchy of Upper Bavaria and the Palatinate of the Rhine).
6:05 The greenish part are the (mainly Catholic) regions which (Protestant) Württemberg got from Napoleon (like Baden got its southern and eastern parts). Those regions belonged before 1805 either to Imperial cities or Imperial abbey or were ruled by Habsburg as "Further Austria".
11:00 Arminius, later wrongly also called Hermann, was a chief of the Cherusci tribe, which was later absorbed by the Saxons and Thuringians. The Hermunduri lived south from the Cherusci and Chatti and were either a subgroup of the Suebi or of the Herminones (or both). The name Armin, romanized Arminius, derives from the name of the war god of the Herminones, while "Hermann" derives from a word for warrior (lit. "man in the army").
bro really asked himself if bavaria was east germany, who doesnt remember the good soviet BMWs?
To be fair, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is also called Eastern Germany, while we could say Northern Germany.
SED, CSU, same thing.
😂😂😂
05:00 Yes the Anglo-Saxons are derived from the same Saxons who gave rise to the three German states mentioned. The ancestors of the English came from Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony), at a time when the "Lower" prefix didn't exist yet. The other two states with "Saxony" in their names are related as well, but only indirectly. The Saxons also gave rise to the names of the English counties of Essex, Wessex and Sussex.
The "Anglo" part of the Anglo-Saxons refers to the Angles. There is no state named after them, but there's a region called "Angeln" close to the German/Danish border. The Angles gave rise to the word English, and the names of England and the English region of East Anglia.
Yes, we call it München, english call it Munich. But italians and spaniards call it Monaco, which I did not know when a travellar at the Munich train station asked me "Monaco?" and I search with him for a train to Monaco in Monaco.
Britain is also split into self-governing areas like German States, but we call them 'Counties', and there are the equivalents of City states called Metropolitan boroughs. We also have the 4 separate countries of the United Kingdom.
Europe's all mixed through each other all the same type of languages
The two dots over a vowel letter indicates a different pronunciation of the vowel. It is called an umlaut in German and goes over the first vowel if there are two vowels. This is what I was taught in Beginner’s German at university in Australia by a German tutor.
**** The comments here indicate a dispute and that the mark (two dots) is actually a ‘trema’ that indicates the vowel change (the umlaut) should happen when pronounced.
In German the round ‘o’ of ‘Tochter’ (daughter) changes to ‘Töchter’ (daughters, plural), and is said like ‘turkter’ or terkter’ but without the ‘r’ sound. From O to ER.
Two dots with two vowels is called a diaeresis in English (dieresis in American). The dots go over the second vowel to indicate the vowels should be pronounced separately. Like naïve, or Brontë (only one vowel but it should be pronounced).
Any marks in languages are called diacritics or diacritic marks in English, to mean all the various dots and squiggles.
Where do you live, near the Big Castle? and it became a village... just like New Castle
The letters A, O and U with dots above them are so-called umlauts. The dots above stand for an E, the spelling of which is derived from the historical German Kurrent script and at some point moved above the letters instead of next to them. So Ä=AE, Ö=OE and Ü=UE.
The letters A, O and U also exist without dots above them in German, but the umlauts are pronounced like a mixture of the two letters (e.g. Ä (A and E) sounds different from an A without dots above).
Just as there is the å (A with an O above) in Swedish, which is pronounced like a mixture of A and O.
Oh and you have that combination of letters alot in Latin. E.g. "des irae", which sounds different from "des ira" and "des ire". Just that the E after the A moved aboved the A in German and the E was written differently back then, so it is just two dots.
They aren't "states", they are "laender" ("lands" in English). The dots on u, a or o in German are called "umlaut" and they modify the sound of the vowel. French has something similar with the grave, circumflex and acute. Re the "exotic" names we see in foreign countries, the same happens in English, giving us placenames like "Newcastle", "Portsmouth", "Cambridge", "Oxford", etc.
Then please explain why every Bundesland has a Staatskanzlei, and why Bavaria, Saxony and Thuringia call themselves Staaten! Spoiler alert: All 16 are states. And Länder. Same thing.
Bundesstaaten = Bundesländer
Germany is a fereral republic and a republic has states. Our "Bundesländer" are federal states. The german word "Land" has some different translations like "land" "country" or "state".
The dots are called trema. Umlaut is a linguistic process in which the pronunciation of a vowel is influenced and changed by another nearby vowel. Umlaut exists in many languages but not all languages mark their umlauts in script.
As others have said, the German Bundesländer are federal states. They each have their own constitution, parliament, prime minister, state law courts, etc.
As for French, while the acute and grave accents do represent different vowel sounds, they are not umlauts because they do not change the sound of a letter in a word when it is used in its different forms (e.g. plural noun, comparative adjective, or conjugated verb) as happens in German. In addition, the circumflex doesn't change any sound at all, it represents the letter s from Old French that is no longer pronounced. E.g. Latin "fenestra" became Old French "fenestre" and Modern French "fenêtre".
The two dots are called "Umlauts". Put very simply, they would be like adding an (e) after the first vowel. Therefore an (ü) is pronounced as (ue) and (ä) is (ae) etc...... Another you may see is (ß), like a capital B, sometimes shown with a tail. This indicates a double S. Although still in use, it is less common than it was?
So the diacritics (specificly called tilde for these dots) on top of the a, u or o signify an Umlaut in German. An Umlaut, as the German name suggests, is s changed sound.
Haus (house) becomes plural Häuser (hoyzer), for example.
English has these, too, like mouse - > mice but no one thought they should spell it this way in English, I guess.
The origin of the tilde specifically is that the spelling was originally ae, which was later written as a small e atop the a, which later still was abbreviated to the dots we know.
Or in well short: some monks were lazy xD
Some monks might have been lazy, but English monks and writers have been much lazier. With German and other languages you get at least hints how to pronounce a word. With English this has become a complete mess and therefore you have to learn for every word how to pronounce it.
About your comment with Germany being a crossroad; Lenin once said: "He who controls Berlin, controls Germany; and who controls Germany, controls Europe."
Just when I drive to work each day in the west of Germany I see license plates from Poland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland, France, Austria, Slovakia, Romania, Italy and even Great Britain I've seen a couple of time. And that is just on a part of the highway that stretches out 20km and just the ones I can remember. I'm not even going to mention all the trucks I've seen. They came from all over Europe. Germany really is (And not just metaphorically) the beating heart of Europe.
I'm telling you, when we would start taxing trucks and cars passing through Germany, we would either be rich or finally have empty highways. To me, that sounds like a win-win.
Some info on the Saxonies:
The actual territory of Saxony was in the north, in modern Lower Saxony. It was a large duchy initially held by the "Liudolfinger Dynasty" of which "Otto the great" was one. It switched owners and grew even more over the centuries until, in 1180, over major political trouble, "Frederick Barbarossa" of the "Staufer Dynasty" removed the title of the "Duchy of Saxony" from his cousin "Henry the Lion" and ostracized him, and then granted (a council did that) it to "Bernhard I." of the "Askanier Dynasty". (Within his Dynasty, Bernhard was "Bernhard III., but he was the first Bernhard of saxony, hence the number)
Bernhard was the youngest Son of "Albrecht the Bear" (the first Count of Brandenburg after it was taken from the slavs btw.)
Though, he did not get the Territory, he just got the title. His main title at that time was count of the March Meißen. Meißen is in todays Saxony. A duke is higher than a count, so he would obviously rather wear that title. So the Duchy of Saxony went south east to todays Saxony while the original saxony became a plot of Land for many smaller counties, bishoprics and duchies like Braunschweig-Lüneburg, Altmark, Münster, and Bremen.
Doesn't lower/upper refer to the position relative to a river's source?
English had got rid of diacritical marks very early in its development. This is a rationalisation of absorbing other language influences like Norse and Norman French.
It's the same with Lower Saxony as with Lower and Upper Egypt. Always remember that the orientation of old maps were different from the maps used today. "North" wasn't always on the top of such maps. But there was always the difference between more elevated parts of a country as we have this still in the "Highlands" of Scotland and the lower parts like in the Netherlands which literally mens "low countries".
Upper & Lower Egypt is to do with the Nile - Upper, going up towards the source and Lower, going down towards the sea
@@williamdfr1715 Rivers flow always from more elevated parts of a country to the sea and there are also rivers that flow through Saxony...
as a native and still resident German I SHOULD know, but I don't. The name Lower Saxony for sure
does not come from north or south position, but maybe from a lower landscape without any mountains or hills
- - - like the Netherlands [low(er) lands] ?
There is something more to Berlin. The name Berlin is also related to the Askanian noble family and "Albrecht der Bär" - Albrecht the bear fought against the last heathen slavic ruler Jacza/Jaczow in todays area of Berlin. All districts of Berlin with the - ow ending are former strongholdes of the slavs in Berlin and Brandenburg like Rudow, Pankow, Mahlow, Gatow, Kladow etc
Albrecht defeated the slavs and their ruler Jaczow, in a long but hard battle and forced Jaczow to flet over the Havel River, where he almost drowned, but according to a legend he surived, because he saw the light of Jesus and sworn he would become a christian, if he surive crossing the river and he survived and became a christian.
Because of that Berlin was named after Albrecht the bear the Askanian Knight.
Another legend said that after the defeat, Jaczow searched for the pagan priests for an advise, who advised him to build a castle for his wife Wanda in the Müggelberge and wall her in there to keep Albrecht's knights away. According to the legend, he did this, but after he did so, his castle and his wife sank into the Müggellake, where his wife was allowed to go ashore again once a year.
As for why things were named after such simple things like Big Castle, you have to know how little people got to travel around back then. Even in medieval times(so quite some time after the names for the Bundesländer were already established) a normal farmer usually never traveled further then 30km (18.6 miles) from his place of birth in his entire live. So if a place was called Big Castle it was likely the only big castle you ever saw, and therefore a perfectly good name to identify this place.
lower means closer to seelevel, on a map it looks like upper, but lower means deeper , down to seelevel
Lower elevation wise, but not necessary closer to sea level, ask the Dutch ;o).
I think the only diacritic mark we use in English (other than for borrowed words) is the diaeresis, which is two dots over a vowel, just like the umlaut. It's used to indicate that the vowel should be pronounced where the default might be for it to be silent (as in the novelist Brontë sisters), or to show that consecutive vowels should be pronounced separately, not as a diphthong such as the name Noël or the word coöperate. It's rarely used in English, but also appears in some other European languages.
It amuses me to see marks misused in the names of Heavy Metal bands from English-speaking countries, such as Spın̈al Tap (the dot over the i has gone and there cannot be an umlaut over a consonant).
Anyone who thinks we have complex diacritic marks in European languages should check out written Vietnamese for a mind blowing rethink.
Many languages that use the Latin alphabet like English, German or also French for example, have more or different sounds than the Latin language. The problem mostly arises with the vowels.
German indicate that an shifted Version of A, O or U should be used with two dots. This happens with "Umlauts" in cases for a word going from one form to another (e. g. singular to plural). "Umlaut" could be translated to "modified sound".
French does something similar with their accents but for different reasons than the mechanics of Umlauts.
English chose to use the same letter over and over, thats why the pronunciation is so inconsistent:
I: mini vs mine
O: oops vs ops
U: uniform vs burger
E: evil vs pen
So it all stems from using one alphabet for many languages that it wasn't made for
You're pretty well informed about German history. That's more than you learn at school, right? München is only< called Muinich in English, in French of Italian it's Monaco.
Saarland probably seems familiar to you, because after WWII it became it's own country for a while until they held a referendum and decided to rejoin the now democratic west germany.
Most of the northern names derive from the Saxon language, because among the germanic tribes in Germany, the Saxons over time became the most powerful.
Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony for example became so powerful, that he could press the Emperor of the HRE to do his bidding by refusing to take up arms with him. He also founded countless towns and cities like Munich and Brunswig (and gave them the Lion as insignia)
Westphalia wasn't named after the treaty of westphalia, like Versailles was'nt named after the treaty of versailles, but vice versa.
Non Germans have many different names for Munich, but yes, in standard German Munich is called München. Nevertheless Bavarians actually call their capital city Minga, because within Germany you find 3 district language/dialect groups: Allemanic, Bavarian and Low German, with Low German being practically a dialectal continuation of Dutch. Bavarian is also spoken in most parts of Austria and parts of northern Italy, Alemannic dialects are spoken also in Switzerland.
So Germans use standard German to communicate, because their dialectal can differ to a point where people can't understand each other.
Standard German was created 1873 ( Erste Deutsche Rechtschreibkonferenz)
The dots are NOT called umlaut. Please everyone stop calling those diacritic marks umlaut. They are called trema and they signify the presence of an umlaut. Umlaut is when one vowel has changed its sounds due to the influence of another nearby vowel.
People are not going to start calling the two dots indicating German Umlauts a trema just because you want them to. The definition in the Cambridge Dictionary online is:
a mark put over a vowel in some languages, such as German, to show that the pronunciation of the vowel is changed:
The German word "Gebäude", which means "building", has an umlaut over the "a".
The definition in the Merriam Webster online dictionary is:
a diacritical mark ¨ placed over a vowel to indicate a more central or front articulation
Umlaut is therefore the term used in both the British and US standard versions of the English language.
The Greek term "trema" is misleading because it can also be used to signify a diaeresis which has a completely different function in English and some Romance languages.
@@alicemilne1444 Dictionaries don‘t provide definitions, they describe usage. If you want to learn what the difference between a trema and an umlaut are wikipedia can be a good starting point for that.
@@NuEM78 How odd - most single-language dictionaries that I have ever used do state that they provide definitions.
I know what the difference between a trema and an umlaut is, both linguistically, diacritically and in common parlance.
You cannot dictate how other people use language. You can try, but you won't succeed.
Stadt means Town/City, Staaten mean state therefore they are know as stadtstaaten = city states.
Only some of the states have an direct 1to1 lineage to the original constituents of the German Empire. Others were split up or almagated.
Hilarious how a non-German speaker makes a video about German names he can’t even pronounce 😂
Hey you know I love your content, but we need some more Dutch/NL related content. Or.. mobility type of content (that does not only well in NL but also all across Europe and with curious people like yourself) please watch more of the channel ''Not Just Bikes'' basically every video is great so I'm not even going to suggest any specific video, again, all is fine (and SUPER good for learning about stuff!)
The names of things often were explanations
for example there is a legend that the city of Nürnberg (Nuremberg) is called so because there is
'Nur' (only)
'n' (a)
'berg' (mountain)
and it describes the city perfectly there is only one big hill and it's pretty much in the middle of the city
There is another explanation that the part "Nürn" derives from Nor (Fels > Rock) / nourin or norin (felsig > rocky), so Nürnberg is there where a rocky mountain is.
It would have been cool to include former german states as well (such as Königsberg etc)
There are three Umlaute Ä, Ü, Ö it is like the Swedish ø, these are other pronounciations on the letter. If you don't have the letter on the keyboard you can also write them with an "e", ä=ae, ö=oe and ü=ue.
In German and most other European languages (Spanish, Italian, Polish, ...) we ponounce the letter in a clear way and always the same.
The pronounciation between the a of Vater (father) and Tasche (bag) does not change, as it does in Englisch.
If there are more fathers, they become Väter, with the pronounciation like bag.
Yes, the Westphalian Peace ended the 30-years-war. Very good!
No, Bavaria was West Germany and most of US troops were stationed there, that is also why so many US-Americans think about Bavaria, when the think about Germany.
ø is Danish, Norwegian and Faroese. Swedish use ö.
5:01 To be fair, Munich is the english term and München is the german term but those are not the only terms for this city. ANother interesting one is Itlian: Monaco die Baviera.
15:05 Yeah, Humans aren't really creative at naming things :)
For example Deutschland itself also in its original form basically meant "land of the people", while the term used (in small variations) by most slavic languages, Niemcy originally meant "mute" - as it was applied to "those that can not speak [the languages of the slavic peoples]".
Some deep dive ur doing here, congrats. Next step is going from Saxony (Lower) to Wessex (west-saxony) Essex (east saxony) and Sussex (south-saxony) in the UK :-))
Small mistake 1:25 , 1919 isn't 19th century, it's the 20th century.
Bavaria and parts of Baden-Wüttemberg were occupied by US-Forces after the war. Bavaria was therefore in the american section.
The dots show a diferent sound, like our man and men. So you can write Mann, but Männer, which is actually Maenner.
"Hesse" is written wrong, in Germany its "Hessen"
üöä --> åæø would be spelt like this AA(å/ä) AE(æ) OE(ø/ö) & Y(ü) for at least Danish and Swedish.
Did that guy at the start call Germany a state? It's a country
There are three so called Umlaute (engl.: umlauts) in the German language: "Ä, ä", "Ö, ö" and "Ü, ü"
- Ä: Whereas the German "a" sounds like the "a" in the English word "car" the "ä" sounds like the "a" in the English word "care" [an example making this clear: (engl.) bear = (germ.) Bär]
- Ö: The "ö" sounds like the "e" in "her", the "i" in "first" or the "u" in "turtle".
- Ü: The "ü" is exactly pronounced like the French "u".
It sounds like something between the English "ee" and "oo".
There is no equivalent of the "ü" phoneme in the English language
If you struggle with the pronunciation of the "ü", better stick to "ee" instead of "oo"! This will be comprehended a lot better. 🙂
PS: Please be aware that the guy from General Knowledge is heavily mispronouncing almost every single name in that video!
just as an info the german flag is not black red yellow, it is black red gold ... have a nice day
The treaty of Westphalia put a end to the 30 years war, in 1648....
you should give it a try watching "How anyone (including YOU) can read German" by RobWords
Yes, Peace of Westphalia ended the 30-Year War. Also the 80-Year War between Spain and the Dutch (Republic).
Technically the colours of 🇩🇪 should be black, red and gold, not yellow.
Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, Article 22: …(2)Die Bundesflagge ist schwarz-rot-gold. (The federal flag is black-red-gold.)
More or less the territory of what is modern Germany was either the target of, or the origin of wars, or even both at the same time. Virtually anyone and everyone marched through these territories to plunder, conquer, cross, invade or be invaded. From almost every neighbor as well as ON every neighbor. Being in the middle of almost all major population groups does have both advantages as well as disadvantages. That's the history in the last 3000 years at least. Trying to give even a short summary of who entered and influenced from where at which point in time is worth several weeks of history and prehistorical studies.
That's the reason why I always do a spit-take whenever I hear some ignorant current German claim to be a "Bio-Deutscher", a 'biological German'.
The number of people who cross-bred within these territories is absolutely huge. There simply are NO biological groups who can claim to be the 'original German'.
The German flag's colours are black, red, gold (not yellow) 🧡
I have a vague memory that someone had called it mustard but was eventually freed in court.
@@andreasfischer9158 black as coal, red as the meat of the sausage, yellowish colour of mustard... very suitable association for our bbq loving country. 😇
The dots change the sound of the letter a bit. And its another 3 vowels. But its basicly just a modified A, O or U. The thing is that the difficulty in english is that you need to hear every word at least once to know how its spoken. If you would see for example the word knight and dont know it you would say something like knigget. In german and most other languages this is not the case for the most part. And thats why sometimes you need extra letters in other languages. If you can read it you can speak it. German is more difficult than english but its different things about it that are difficult.
If you want to know how these 3 (/4) letters sound, i try to explain.
a German A is pronounced like "Ah" in english, like in the word "bra" and not the "aeh"- sound it does in english. and the letter Ä sounds pretty much the same as the english pronounced A if you remove the "eh" from "aeh". So the english A when you speak the alphabet sounds like Äi sounds in german. Or like "hey" or "hay" sounds it could be spelled "häy". Sure this is no word but it would sound the same. Actually the german word for bear is Bär and sounds almost the same.
The O in german is pretty much the same. In english it sounds more like "ouh" and in german its more like "Oh". If you add the dots the Ö sounds like the english u in the word turf. So for a german the english word for turf could be spelled like törf and it would sound the same. Also english speakers pronounce Berlin like Börlin would sound in german. Sidenote the correct pronounciation for Berlin would be Bear-lean
And the U in german sounds like "Uh" (like a porn star sounds :-) ) and in english sounds more like "you". If you add the dots to make Ü the letter sounds like the y in pyjama. So if you would spell it Püjama it would sound the same.
There is one more letter ß but this is pretty easy just think of it as double s. Maybe its spoken a bit sharper but its almost interchangable.
Really?!? Spoken is the clue to that. Accends are really more influenced by next neighbours. Good luck choosing which one it is.
nice video, funny that you only react to the mention of Saxony and have no reaction about the mention of Hessia a staat that actually send troops against the Americans in surport of the British
Freistaaten! Free States (not Flächenländer). It's like a country at it's own under the German Flag different by law, language and political decitions. It goes back to the Roman Empire. Man I hate it when US Americans try to explain something on UA-cam and get so many things wrong. You got your language from the Anglo-Saxon Tribe. The invented Americ... Sorry ENGLISH! 1 minute in and I'm out.
I'm afraid you are wrong. For a start, the person who compiled the original video is Portuguese, I think. Secondly, Flächenländer is an official term used in Germany. I live in Germany, speak German and have just looked up the definitions of Flächenland and Freistaat in the Duden (Germany's equivalent of the OED).
*Flächenland* redirects to *Flächenstaat* and the definition for that is:
/Bundesland im Unterschied zu den Stadtstaaten Berlin, Hamburg und Bremen/
(My translation:)
Federal state other than the city states Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen.
*Freistaat*
/Teil der amtlichen Bezeichnung der Bundesländer Bayern, Sachsen und Thüringen/
(My translation)
Part of the official designation of the federal states of Bavaria, Saxony and Thürungia.
Also. The term "free state" does not go back to the Roman Empire (which never managed to conquer most of what is now Germany, and certainly not Saxony or Thuringia) but in part to the Holy Roman Empire which was basically founded by Charlemagne - or to give him his German name, Karl der Große - in around 800 CE.
The actual explanation for the term Freistaat is given on a page on the website of the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (Federal Centre for Political Education) as follows (with my translation below)
/Wieso "Freistaat"?
Der Grund für diese Bezeichnung liegt in der Vergangenheit. Die Vorsilbe „frei“ bezieht sich darauf, dass sich diese Länder von einer Herrschaft befreit hatten. Nehmen wir als Beispiel Bayern. Bis 1918 war Bayern ein Königreich. Dann gab es eine Revolution und die neuen Herren riefen die Republik aus und nannten das Land von da an Freistaat Bayern. Ähnliche Bezeichnungen in Städtenamen wie Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg oder Freie Hansestadt Bremen, die sich bis heute erhalten haben, gehen ebenfalls auf historische Ursachen zurück. Im Mittelalter gab es eine Reihe von deutschen Städten wie etwa auch Köln, das eine "freie Reichsstadt" war und sich selbst verwaltete./
Why Free State?
The reason for this designation lies in the past. The prefix "free" refers to the fact that these states had freed themselves from an overlordship. Take Bavaria, for example. Up until 1918 Bavaria was a kingdom. Then there was a revolution and the new people in charge declared the country to be a republic and henceforth called it the Free State of Bavaria. Similar designations in city names such as the Free Hanseatic City of Hamburg or the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, which have persisted to this day are also historically founded. In the Middle Ages there were a number of German cities, including Cologne as well, which were "Free Imperial Cities" and had their own administrations.
Länder = Laender
ä = ae
ü = ue
Ö = oe
Saxony was the last country to be Christianized by Charlemagne. And that too by the sword.
The Saxon people have nothing to do with the federal state of Saxony. Especially in the Holy Roman Empire, we must abandon the idea that these are countries.
People who lived there in the Middle Ages were not people, but mostly "unfree" people (Unfreie) who belonged to the country like the trees or the animals in the forest, and the land belonged to a Lord. Unfreie only became a citizen when they bought citizenship and could afford it. Then they was also subject to military service. They were not if they "unfree".
If a Lord changed (through war or inheritance), they belonged to another Lord. The countries were divided into smaller and smaller parts by inheritance, because according to Germanic law every male descendant inherited the land in equal parts.
When the problem was recognized, the "electorate" (Kurfürstentum) was established. These principalities could not be divided. This is how today's Saxony got its name, when a saxon Lord received this electorate. Something like that, it was a bit more complicated.
A good example is Switzerland. These were also principalities and free cities mostly of the Holy Roman Empire. The people who lived there spoke French, German or Italian. It didn't matter. If the Lords supported the Burgundians, they belonged to Burgundy, if he supported the French king, they belonged to France and if they supported the emperor, they belonged to the Holy Roman Empire. At some point, the citizens (citizens, not residents) of free cities joined together to form a confederation and chased away their Lords. Only then did the confederation have its own identity.
It's Hessen and not Hesse though.
You're putting too much AGC on the inset video. I find it too annoying to listen to.
Too bad they didn't mention the most famous German state: Prussia. No longer German, but integrated into Poland, for me it remains the historical most influential German state.
Otto....Germany's most important chancellor in my view. It is possible that he was one of the best statesmen Germany has ever had. Certainly prior to 1933 and possibly since 1945. The disaster in-between makes me shudder.